manenita

We dream of retiring (in about 5 years) to be able to travel extensively. We would like to spend a month or two on each city. Cities we are interested on include: Barcelona, Paris, Florence, Venice, Palma de Mallorca, Mexico City, Oaxaca, San Antonio, TX. etc.etc.
We hope to be able to form a group of retirees that loves to travel but that needs housing at each stay. We think it is feasible to think that we could collectively rent or buy apartments in say 10-12 different cities and occupy it only 1-2 months at a time. We all would share expenses and maintenance and enjoyment. We all then would be able to travel from one location to the other.
Does that sound interesting to you?

mimosa

It does but can't afford it. I hardly get by on my pension.

Jean

Sounds wonderful in theory, but I suspect in reality it would be an expensive nightmare.

How do you get a group of unrelated people to agree on maintenance issues? What if some people are a little slow in chipping in? What if you can't agree on which properties to buy and where, dates and amounts of property usage? Not to be morbid, but what do you do when someone dies? Can the investment interest then by inherited by people you've never met? Multiply every possible problem you can think of by the number of properties and again by the number of investors.

I'm guessing for liability reasons the investor group should form a corporation (what type I have no idea), so you'd have to figure out what state to incorporate in, hire a lawyer, etc.

I think a better concept to consider might be your buying property in a popular tourist destination in the U.S. and then participating in a house swapping program.

Patrick

I suspect you've never owned a condominium where there are always problems getting people to agree. This idea sounds even more difficult. How do you "police" or "select" other owners? I assure you with 10 owners of one house or apartment, there will be at least one or two that will leave the place a total mess, destroy something, turn it over to their 16 grandchildren celebrating a graduation or spring break, or some other nightmare. So now what do you do? They own the place too, so you can't kick them out!

SusanP

I think you would have to really know the people you were co-buying these places with. When we were in Paris a couple of years ago, at a jazz club we were seated at a long table for dinner where you were literally right next to the other diners at the same table, so we got talking to the people next to us. They had an apartment in Paris that was owned by six couples and each couple got the apartment for two separate months per year. Roughly, each couple had one month in great weather and one month in not-so-great weather. So in theory, it can work, and certainly did for these six couples, but they obviously decided at the outset which months each couple would have and didn't have to worry about any of the couples not keeping up expenses. Seemed like a very agreeable/adaptable group to me, and I did get the impression that they all knew each other. They weren't trying to set up something like this with strangers. As Patrick pointed out, there could be all kinds of problems if you didn't know who you were dealing with.

mermaid_

manenita, in a perfect world it would be a perfect idea, but otherwise, it's a disaster in the making! I can only imagine the endless negotiations that would go on before agreement among all parties was reached. You'd all probably be one foot in the grave before you got a homeshare network set up. Maybe you could look into home exchange programs and/or timeshare (reputable ones). That might get you the travel you want at a reasonable rate. And of course if you rent for a month at a time, the rental rates are nowhere as expensive as they are for daily, or even weekly, rentals. Wanting to stay for a month in places works in your favor, budget wise. If you don't own, you're free to go where you please, too.

L84SKY

Who knows? You could be just the person to make that work and start a trend. It does seem like it would take a lot of negotiation but you've given yourself 5 years, more or less to work it out.

But why collectively buy housing units? What happens when if you decide to no longer travel? (I know, I know- perish the thought!)
But if you can get together with 6 other people or who can afford to buy vacation homes,wouldn't it make sense that each couple buy one on their own and trade off? That way you will always have your intial investment. If another party doesn't keep up with their maintenence or payments you can simply eliminate them from the group. If the Smith's want to hand over they keys to their grandkids, then the grandkids and their 50 closest friends can trash the Smith's place and not the collective's place.
Even buying one vacation home with one other couple would be a problem solving opportunity. But it would be much easier to manage then with a group of people. And it seems it would work out to be about the same cost as buying 10-12 collectively.

ira

Isn't this called a "time share"?

PatrickLondon

Quite. Why not just join one of the existing time-share organisations (though personally I'd find it very restricting to feel that I'd have to visit somewhere just because I'd already invested in it) - or simply a home exchange service?

Curt

Yep sounds like time share to me and of course you can do that now and that will help to resolve all those issues raised about maintenance, etc.

But multiple weeks of a time share program.

annie_pie

There's a great website called Homeexchange.com & they have homes all over the world belonging to people interested in swapping homes. There are categories for seniors, hospitality exchanges, rentals etc. It may be worth taking a look at.

nytraveler

Agreed - what you're looking at is creating a small private timeshare.

The obvious problems with this are:

You would need to form a corporation - with all that entails, including legal responsibilities for all officers - and hire a manager for each location

You would have to pay expenses year round (maintenance) on all properties

If you're all retirees what happens when you pass on - it's unlikely your children will be interested - and you've tied up their inheritences in useless property they won;t be able to get rid of

The financial cost would be extremely high when you consider all factors

And the mental/emotional/time cost would be even higher. Anyone who has ever served on a co-op board would be able to give you hours of horror stories on the issues involved - from taking a committee and 4 months to decide what color to repaint the lobby to exactly what pets (including size/weight of dog) can be brought into the property

Wouldn't it simply be much esier and cheaper to rent an apartment in each city?

tuscanlifeedit

I think the idea of buying a place in a highly desirable US location and doing home exchanges is a good one. We have a great house, but who the heck in Europe would want to vacation in Pittsburgh? ;-)

janisj

besides all the problems already mentioned - there is the cost of real estate to consider. In most of those cities even a fairly basic 2 bedroomed flat in a desirable area would run over a million dollars. so you are looking at a 12 to 20 million dollar investment w/o taxes, maintenence and so on.

Just join a time share.

lincasanova

i think it would be easier to exchange , as mentioned, an apt. in a resort for home exchange everywhere.

buy a two bedroom somewhere near golf/or major attractions (disney?NYC,Grand canyon) that YOU like, then go into the house exchange programs full blast.

surely you will be successful.

RufusTFirefly

I think it's an interesting concept that needs more thought and work. While there are a lot of hurdles to overcome, that doesn't mean that some variation of this idea might not work.